The Aging Boxer's Last Stand

Tom King is a big brute of a man who looks every inch the champion prizefighter he was twenty years ago. Times are harder now. He seldom gets a good match and even has trouble finding work on the docks. As the story opens, Tom is finishing a meager meal of flour gravy and bread. He had been craving a piece of steak since the morning, and his poor wife had tried to get meat from the local butchers, but they refused her credit. She purchased the bread with their last few shillings and borrowed the flour from a neighbor. There is no food in the house. She eats nothing herself and has sent their two children to bed without supper. She knows that Tom needs all the nourishment he can get. In less than two hours, he will be fighting a younger man from New Zealand for a thirty-pound purse. She tells Tom that he must win, and Tom reassures her, determined “to get meat for his mate and cubs,” or else his family will go hungry.

Without money for a cab

Tom walks the two miles to the arena and wonders how many more fights he has in him. Boxing is really all he knows how to do, and he knows that the young fighters sooner or later beat down the older ones. How much longer does he have? Tom remembers his first fight against an “old un.” Stowsher Bill was his name, and after Tom had beaten him, the older boxer sat weeping in the dressing room. He had laughed at the misfortune of the old fighter then, but youth is now his nemesis. It is his turn to face the superior speed and stamina of someone almost twenty years younger. Had he known years ago that this would be happening to him, would he have stayed in boxing? No one explained that to him, but had he been told, he doubts that he would have listened. Boxing was too much fun, and it was easy then.

Tom knows that youth must be served

He is doubly concerned because he has not been able to train properly or maintain a decent diet. Drawing on considerable experience and skill, he hopes to win the combat. Spite of positivism he had, king lost the fight…

Tom king knew that if he had been able to eat a steak before the fight, the outcome would have been different.

He left the fight penniless and in despair. The story ends with King crying on his two-mile walk home, as he cannot afford a cab ride.

It was a balanced fight

spite of old age, Tom could win the combat. All people who were watching the fight they support the old men. That support motivated to tom, he got more energy, and people were with him. Tom realized that when people say that you are old, only is physical appearance, it is matter of you think in your mind. The old age is something normal that everybody has to pass it. Tom expressed his gratitude to people trust him. The opponent felt embarrassed to lose with someone who is so old, but he could notice movements what it acquire with the experience that he did not have. Tom went to his house happily, but very cautious and his wife was proud of him. She knew that everybody is going to trust him again. The butcher will sell on credit again. Everything was perfect.

Tom realized that he cannot make the same mistake before. he decided I was going to create an academy for learning to children how fight the best way, take care himself and he will  look for the way that his wife has a everything what she needs